Euro Trains: We’Ve Never Had It so Good

By Hall, Peter

One swallow, in the old phrase, doesn’t make a summer. But maybe half a dozen non-airborne humans tell us something about the way the country is starting to take its summer holidays. We’ve decided to go by train, I’ve been saying. That’s funny, friends say, so have we. Now it happens that these friends are all environmentally-aware – and also savvy about European train travel. But, for that reason, we could just be the trendsetters. Heathrow’s Terminal 5 fiasco may have proved a turning point for some, whether experienced directly or by way of television. Fuel surcharges may also have had an effect, along with all those hidden extras the low-cost airlines add to those wonderful bargains, turning a 99p fare into a Pounds 99 one. More widely, the global warming debate is generating a sense of guilt about carbon footprints. Train travel just seems more virtuous.

But it’s also because people are discovering that as new stretches of high-speed line roll out across Europe – London to Paris and Brussels last November, Paris to southern Germany last summer – rail travel is now proving a serious competitor to the plane. In a couple of weeks, we’ll take the Eurostar out of St Paneras at 8.53am, make a quick connection on to the TGV at Disneyland Paris, and arrive in deepest Languedoc, not far from the Spanish border, at 5.37pm local time: seven-and-a-half hours of tranquillity. A couple of weeks after that, a group of planners will leave St Paneras at 1.32pm and after a ten-minute walk between Paris stations followed by dinner on the train – arrive in Karlsruhe, deep in southern Germany, at 8.25pm.

Such trips were in the realms of fantasy only 18 months ago. And they’re only the beginning. A new line will connect Brussels to Amsterdam and Cologne, and four years from now, a Perpignan- Barcelona connection will link the French and Spanish systems.

All this isn’t yet a revolution – but it could be the first rumbles of one. As airline bosses see red ink beginning to spill over their balance sheets, the impact on local economies could be profound. If the lowcost airlines suddenly stop flying to remote rural airports, what will happen to the real estate markets they’ve generated around all those small French and Italian towns?

And if we start taking the train everywhere, what will that do for the investments that Argent St George are making around King’s Cross, or Lend Lease around Stratford? As regenerationbased development faces frosty times everywhere, our departing trains could offer them a welcome ray of sunshine on the horizon.

“A sense of guilt about carbon footprints means train travel just seems more virtuous”

Sir Peter Hall is (Bartlett) Professor of Planning and Regeneration, University College London. Email: sir.peter.hall@haymarket.com

Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Aug 15, 2008

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